The author Gavin Menzies has been visiting Beijing for 70 years and finds the
modern city to be the throbbing heart of China.

The Forbidden City 'symbolises all that is good and bad about China'Photo: Reuters

By Gavin Menzies

5:55PM BST 11 Aug 2008

Why Beijing?

Now the throbbing heart of China and the world’s biggest construction site. Seven hundred years ago, Beijing was capital of Kublai Khan’s Mongol Empire, which at its peak stretched to the Mediterranean.

What do you miss most when you are away?

The fantastic food and culture.

Where is the best place to stay?

As near to Tiananmen Square as you can afford. Hotels are rebuilt with such rapidity it is difficult to recommend specifically; travel operators give the best deals. Our favourite used to be the Beijing Jinglun Toronto (0086 010 5128 6388; www. jinglunhotel.com), a four-star next to the World Trade Centre.

Where would you meet friends for a drink?

In the café in the Imperial Flower Garden after a tour of the Forbidden City.

Where are your favourite places for lunch?

Either at a small restaurant looking at the Great Wall (fried pork and garlic stems) or, if I’m celebrating something, the Fangshan Restaurant (010 6401 1879), on the shore of Beihai lake – a Qing dynasty set banquet, exquisite but expensive.

And for dinner?

First a snack at a street market – I am partial to quail, roast locust and crab apple boiled in hot sugar. Then to a Sichuan or Mongolian restaurant as a reminder that China is an empire with a huge variety of food – rice and prawns in the south: spicy lamb in the west: duck in the north. Alternatively, to one of the monster restaurants serving 3,000 people to see Chinese organisation at its best: or to the 28th floor of the CITC building to view Beijing spread out below.

Where would you send a first time visitor?

On a guided tour with a good operator to the following – in sequence: the Great Wall and Ming Tombs, which epitomise Chinese history. The route to the tombs is flanked by charming statues of Mandarins, generals and animals and the tombs contain priceless crowns and jewellery and the bodies of concubines walled up alive to accompany dead emperors to the next world.

Next, the Forbidden City. It symbolises all that is good and bad about China – buildings of awe-inspiring grandeur achieved by terrible cruelty. Building it impoverished China to the extent that poor people were reduced to eating grass. The slabs of marble required for the Emperor’s Path were so enormous that Beijing streets had to be flooded in midwinter and then allowed to freeze so the stone blocks could be slid across the ice.

Then the Temple of Heaven. This sublime site is accepted as the perfection of Ming architecture and the symbol of Beijing. The Temple was built as a stage for the annual rites the emperor was expected to perform – he came here to pray for good harvests and to seek penance for wrongdoing and guidance in times of calamity. Here he also performed the major ceremonial rites at equinoxes and solstices. The emperor’s “mandate of heaven” was conditional on his correct and diligent performance of these ceremonies.

What would you tell them to avoid?

Chinese opera – if it’s in Chinese.

Public transport of taxi?

Preferably a tour bus with a tour operator. Failing that, a taxi.

Handbag or money belt?

As capital cities go, Beijing is pretty safe. So either.

What should i take home?

Carpets if you know what you are doing. Nothing of high value – not silk, pearls, ceramics, lacquer or antiques – as it’s so easy to get caught out.

And if I only have time for one shop?

The Golden Resources Shopping Mall – the world’s largest – near the Fourth Ring Road.

Gavin Menzies is an author who has been visiting Beijing for 70 years. His latest book is 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance (HarperCollins, £20)